A StarNewsOnline Blog

The emporium for all things literary

The N.C. Writers’ Network is returning to Wrightsville Beach for its 2017 fall conference, and the lineup looks like a Made-in-Wilmington production. Local author Wiley Cash will be the keynote speaker for the conference, to be held Nov. 3-5 at the Shell Island Resort. The author of the critically acclaimed novels “A Land More Kind Than Home” and “This Dark Road to Mercy,” Cash will have his latest book, “The Last Ballad,” released Oct. 3 by William Morrow. (I got… Read More »

“Travels in Vermeer,” an essay collection by UNCW professor Michael White, has been named to the “long list” of the 2015 National Book Award for nonfiction. The New Yorker revealed the list of 10 semi-finalists Wednesday morning (Sept. 16) on behalf of the National Book Foundation, a non-profit set up in 1986 to oversee the National Book Awards. The awards themselves have been presented, in various formats, since 1950. The semi-finalists will be winnowed to five finalists, to be announced… Read More »

Wilmington writer Robert Anthony Siegel has an essay in the fall 2015 issue of The Paris Review. “Criminals” is at least semi-autobiographical, as Siegel describes a trip to Florence at the age of 10, when his father, a criminal defense lawyer, took the family over while handling (legitimate) business for a marijuana-dealing client. While his younger siblings were off to the outdoor café for cannoli, young Robert was dragged to the Uffizi by his culture-vulture mom to stare at great… Read More »

On Thursday (June 19), the Los Angeles Review of Books published an interview with Wilmington poet Michael White by local novelist Robert Anthony Siegel (“All Will Be Revealed”) about White’s new memoir, “Travels in Vermeer.” There’s a whiff of nepotism here: Siegel is associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, while White is chairman of the creative writing department and, technically, Siegel’s supervisor. Still, it’s an interesting exchange. In response to a question about the… Read More »

“Blackout” by Michael White of Wilmington won honorable mention in the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition, conducted by the N.C. Writers’ Network. White faced tough competition. The first-place winner, Gabrielle Freeman of Greenville (“Failure to Obliterate”) holds an MFA in poetry from Converse College. Her work has appeared in Beecher’s Magazine, Chagrin River Review, Gabby, Hobart, Melancholy Hyperbole, Minetta Review, Shenandoah and Waxwing. The second-place winner, Ann Deagon of Greensboro (“Testimony”), is a veteran professor and former editor of the Guilford… Read More »

Thanks to UNCW’s Caroline Cropp for this photo of UNCW faculty members Michael White and Rebecca Lee reading at the annual “Thirsty Tome” event Monday evening (Aug. 27) at Randall Library, on the campus of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Lee, an associate professor of creative writing, just had her short-story collection “Bobcat” released by Penguin Canada. Readers around here have to wait till June 2013, when the book will be released in the USA by Algonquin of Chapel Hill. White,… Read More »

Congratulations to Michael White of Wilmington, who’s the 2012 winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award for his new collection, “Vermeer in Hell.” The award is a collaboration between Persea Press, an independent publisher, and the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project of New York. (Lexi Rudnitsky was a poet who died in 2005 in New York at the age of 32.) The prize includes a $1,000 cash award, a residency at the Anderson Center artists’ colony in Red Wing, Minn.,… Read More »

Thursday, Nov. 4, is Ron Rash Day at Writers Week at the Univesity of North Carolina Wilmington. Rash, the western North Carolina poet and novelist (“Serena,” “Saints at the River”), gives a reading at 7 p.m. in Room 1008 of the UNCW computer science meeting. He’ll also give a fiction talk at 9 a.m. in the Azalea Coast Room of the Fisher Student Center. Also on the Nov. 4 schedule is an “Appreciation” of the late Stanley Colbert, the legendary… Read More »

About This Blog

This is an emporium for all things literary: occasional book reviews, local book news, items about authors (mostly from the Cape Fear area but occasional visitors) and miscellaneous rants.

The usual author is Ben Steelman, feature writer and book columnist for the Star-News. He’s that shaggy, slightly smelly character you spot lurking in the back aisles of your local bookstore. Physically, he has more than a passing resemblance to Ignatius J. Reilly, hero of John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces” — some observers have noted other parallels as well.